Just a place to share some thoughts

Day: November 27, 2010

I was watching the YouTube videos on Danika Barker’s Blog of the Pecha Kucha sessions that were offered during the ECOO Conference and were quite enjoying them. I noticed that some of the speakers had some prompting devices to keep them on the straight and narrow. I saw an iPhone, an iPad, and some traditional paper. Great techniques to avoid the “uh” moments and the “what comes next” ones as well.

Most speakers have some way to organize their presentations to make sure that they cover all the points and in a professional mannner. Some have notes; some have speaker notes; it’s a matter of preference. The key is to make sure that they don’t distract from the message. My personal first noting of a keynote speaker using a portable device would have been Robert Sawyer in his message at the RCAC Symposium a few year’s ago. Robert didn’t use presentation software or the like. It was just his story telling abilities and his Palm speaking notes on the stage. It worked very effectively.

Staying on track and presenting smoothly is something that most speakers aspire to and audiences certainly appreciate. In the classroom, we do have speeches (the bane of most students’ education but an activity that keeps recipe card manufacturers in business) and more recently, the phenomenon of Podcasting which allows students to become the next great communicator.

One technique that I’ve used with students that really ups the interest ante when Podcasting is the use of the website Cueprompter. Everyone has watched the news on television or a political speech at one point and note how smoothly the presentation is. While there’s a great deal to being a terrific orator, they all know the value of a good teleprompter! Cueprompter does the job and it does it for free!

A number of things that a good teleprompter should have is readability by resizing and customizing colours, controls for speed, and the ability to display the text in a mirrored format just in case you’re going to be bouncing the image around before the speaker actually sees it. If you’ve got an internet connected computer, you can’t beat Cueprompter.

But, for the portable folks … there are some other options. For the iPhone/iPod Touch user, there’s a free download of i-Prompt to do the job. Load your text into the software, adjust the speed and display and you’re ready to go live.

For the iPad user, i-Prompt Pro takes advantage of the larger screen size and processing power. It’s also a free product. Both of these are marketed by i-Prompter.com which sells professional grade teleprompting equipment.

There is another alternative. A prompter application with a little more flexibility is available for you to download from the App Store at a discount this weekend. Normally, priced much higher, you have until Sunday to grab PromPterous for $0.99. PromPterous does the text display thing but does allow for more functionality. In addition to typing your text into the prompter, it supports the display of files on your iPad in .doc, .txt, .epub, and .pdf format. That’s a nice feature that lets you edit offline and then upload for use. It also feature pause, go faster an go slower buttons conveniently placed for your thumbs at the bottom of the screen. For this app, I think that I prefer portrait rather than landscape mode for operation.

Now, I don’t want to see the presentation world turn to one where everyone is reading presentations when I attend conferences. You still need the eye contact, the movement, the interaction and all the good stuff that we know makes the difference between a good presenter and the not-so-good. But, I like the concept of these software for a number of reasons.

For students, I think this is a terrific way to organize their thoughts and then to use it during Podcasting. Rather than stammering and having the audience lose interest, they can stay right on track and get a professional job done with no sound of ruffling papers! When they’re podcasting, all that they have is their voice so it needs to be the best that it can be.

For presentations, it does scroll along nicely. If you don’t have the entire speech on it, scrolling speaking points could be used to keep you on track. Also, when time is of the essence like in a Pecha Kucha presentation, it can be your guide and timer. No more wondering how you’re doing for time.

Also for presentations, I can see it being used for practice and timing. I can’t recall the number of times that I’ve sat in hotel rooms the night before a presentation preparing and wondering how the timing would be. No audience likes an unprepared speaker. These applications could help nicely with timing and presentation.

Back to the student though, we know that technology can be engaging when used properly and with purpose. I can see this as a motivator for those speeches – and we might just put those recipe card manufacturers out of business!

But, let’s not put all of our eggs in the teleprompter basket. Here’s a classic!

Teaching Gems is a searchable database of over 1000 of the most engaging, interactive animations, tutorials, learning games, virtual labs and demonstrations freely accessible on the Internet in a wide range of academic subjects.

GoogleTreks™ is organized by subject matter and grade level. Over time, as educators such as yourself, add GoogleTreks to the site, users can find GoogleTreks in Science, Matematics, Social Studies, language Arts, and other curricular areas. GoogleTreks are written for specific age groups: Primary, Elementary, Middle School, High School, and Higher Education.

A podcamp is a sort of user-generated conference, or "unconference", focused on new-media like blogging, podcasting, social media, etc. Anyone who wants to share their interests or experience or get a conversation going is welcome to present, and people in the audience are encourage to participate as well.